


bubble of interest, ready to burst

by dabblingDilettante



Category: Dangan Ronpa, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Gen, Multiple Selves, Pre-Canon, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-26
Updated: 2017-01-26
Packaged: 2018-09-20 00:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9467783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: FULL GAME NDRV3 SPOILERSAkamatsu can't shake a familiar face.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Again, full game spoilers.
> 
> I wanted to write about Akamatsu before the game started.

No one's talking about the new season.

Buried in blankets, Akamatsu flicks through her feed. Friends. Artists. Random celebrities who harped on about the foolish behaviour of attention-obsessed teenagers without a wit of understanding for the ability acting took. There's not a peep of excitement or controversy.

Without another voice to stand on, her tweets go nowhere.

_are they pulling the robot angle again? i guess its cool for the camera, but_

_can we just be done with the detective trope already_

_wow so excited for another perv in the cast lol_

_if amami thinks he'll get through another season, he_

_love the big bug boy but please cut the sacrifice trope we've seen_

_talk about a boring protag_

_pianist? you're joking right?_

_what's up with that bubbly personality anyway this is life or death and_

_it's so stupid to do this if you're going to be that naive_

_can we talk about_

_that's not me_

She closes her drafts.

It isn't a good idea to get worked up about reality television.

 

 

\---

 

 

"Did you check out that new stunt show that was airing?"

"After last time, I think I've learned not to look up your daredevil trash on a school night, thanks."

"What? It's not like they didn't agree to it. I swear it's fun!"

"But what about -"

Akamatsu flicks through her phone. Her lunch crowd is alright. Half the time, she doesnt know where she fits into the conversation. But there's always one, and it's pleasant background noise, usually. She smiles. Stays aware, and none of them too close. It's not working today. Every comment off track to new anime and reality TV makes her lungs tight.

"What about the new Danganronpa season," she interrupts. "I figured more people would be complaining about that."

"What news is there to complain about?"

The sight sticks behind her eyes. "Overused tropes. Bad protagonists." Akamatsu shakes herself free of the vertigo drilling itself through her eyes. "Did you see last night's episode? That pianist is so ... annoying. She talks like she could be friends with anyone, but doesn't trust a single person there."

"Are you watching reruns again?"

She blinks.

"You're so obsessed with that show ... you're like, the biggest fan of it I know."

There aren't any snapshots on her phone. No screenshots. No articles, no comments, nothing to say about a girl with the same face. The same name.

"I heard they're still accepting interviews for the 52nd season ... it's like it'll never end, y'know?"

"Yeah," Akamatsu says. "Maybe the next one will be better.  Always good to hold out hope!"

They all laugh and she's the first to get up from the table, too ready to get outside. Something taps her back. In her head, she can imagine a knife coming down, and spins around - but it's nothing. Someone with overcast eyes and hair for days, staring up at her. Eager.

"You like Danganronpa too?"

They're definitely her junior - hardly a hint of age or maturity in their face. But they're crowding up to her, quiet as they are, too exuberant for such a voice.

"...Yeah," she says. "Yep!" comes a little forced, to make up for it. The image. A wave of nausea at why they might have asked, like familiarity was a reason alone. It would be worse, and she cuts to the chase. "It's my favorite show."

"This is the first time I've met anyone else who liked it in real life! Oh my gosh ..."

It's almost cute.

They barrel forward, before she can walk away, hands over hers. "Do you want to watch it together sometime? I have some of my favorite episodes on my phone, and I really! I really ... it'd be fun!"

There's no recognition in their eyes. But she wonders. "Do you know much about the new season?"

"Of course I do! I saved every preview for new episodes, and followed all the participants old twitters! They're using some really cool theater concepts this time, having an actress for the main protagonist is so cool!"

They don't know anything.

They shouldn't, she reasons, know about something she made up in a stressed fever dream. As if she had anything to be stressed about.

Despite herself, Akamatsu promises them, and watches them skip to class alone.

 

 

\---

 

 

Her computer doesn't act up when the episode starts. The streaming is the same as ever. Same connection. Unless someone as boring as her had earned a super hacker enemy, Akamatsu finds nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing but that V3.

Nothing but a familiar face, adorned in childish music note hair clips, staring too serious at the camera.

She watches more through the phone camera than the screen. Half-second delays and awkward blur make it easier to watch, hearing that voice spouting sporty support at every loser waiting for a chance at a lonely room and a knife.

The pianist is convincing everyone to run through the tunnels to try to escape in this episode. Funny, almost - watching everyone trip and fall. Watching her face slam into the ground, despite how she forces herself up. Akamatsu had seen something similar, back in season 27. Monobear had made a fake escape route through the trash chute in the kitchen. Everyone had slipped through, already cut down to eight by then, covered in trash. Their self-proclaimed protagonist leading the way.

The submarine gambit was a little cliche at this point, but on her first marathon, she'd rolled over herself in giddy joy at the look on their faces once they found the depressurization room.

The little lying weirdo is the first to turn on her.

"Finally," Akamatsu mutters.

Her fingers twitch, a little too long, at the shock on Miss Piano's face. It freezes on her phone's screen and she wonders who did her make-up. If she'd agreed to it. If it was her - and it wasn't - they couldn't pay her to say this naive garbage.

"We'll be friends if we get out of here. For sure!"

"Are you that lonely?" she says at the screen. "Maybe you shouldn't be looking for friends in a den of murderers."

Computers aren't phones and she doesn't get an answer back.

Characters aren't people, so she can't get a response.

 

 

\---

 

 

No one's sitting on the train when Akamatsu boards. The walls trickle vibration and she doesn't take a seat. A school morning is packed. She's used to that. Holding still against nothing, everywhere to fall, makes her jaw ache.

The flash of gold mocks her. On the way home, at the opposite end of the train, Akamatsu would watch her. With that soft glow, she didn't look like a mirror. Akamatsu pulls at the hem of her bland skirt. Her hair sticks out, frazzled and loose from an awkward bleach job. So no one comments on a similar face.

Second glances close in, crushing her to little more than straw. She bumps into them with the sway of the train in that single-minded stare. People notice her staring. Everyone but that girl. Her hair, clipped up with notes, falls into her eyes. There's no way to get a clear look. She never turns enough to check for the glare burning through her.

She closes her eyes when she smiles. She puts too much into small movements - holding up arms in a fake flex, like there's any muscle to admire. Airy expressions of support. Wide and fake, when her head leans back against the window, alone, and cars away.

Words itch under her fingers, fake melodies made to strangle a person. Life is life, television is fake, and real fiction is what it is. Akamatsu doesn't say anything to her. Days pass, and she gives nothing of the heat building behind her eyes.

No one's on today. There's no face to compare with hers. She'd remembered eyeliner, sharp lashes to cut through anyone who looked at her, for nothing. Almost.

Akamatsu holds onto a casting call and waits.

 

 

\---

 

 

"What do you think of doppelgangers?"

"Doppel ...what?"

Trains are coming with the end of class, but Akamatsu leans against the gate. People keep to their business if she's not talking to them. Students rushing to cram school. Clubs. Jobs. She's not going anywhere.

"Clones," she says, to silence. She doesn't think about what she's saying. "Have you ever seen someone who looked just like you?"

Her friend backs up to stand out of the way of busy students, hiding half behind her. "I see people who look like folks I know. But that's sorta to be expected when we're all wearing these uniforms."

Mouth dry, she laughs. "Not so boring as that! Like if you thought you were looking in a mirror, but it started moving on its own. Or if someone was talking, but what came out of their mouth was you?"

"I read a manga like that once."

Akamatsu stares straight ahead. Sunlight glares across, making her eyes water, with every student making their way past traffic. A nerve settles in her gut - a needle, more evident with each slow pulse of her heart.

"It was all about luck being split between three yous. Three people that looked the exact same? Who couldn't be in the same room at once."

She can't play piano. That girl bounces like it's playing in her head, hands behind her back, to the other sidewalk.

"That's probably where I heard about it," Akamatsu says. "Why can't they be in the same room?"

Cars are moving, to how her hair sways, and she can see it. A simple crash. Someone looking the wrong way, because of an idiot standing in the middle of the road. Who would be so foolish when they had somewhere to go - be. Akamatsu's fingers burn around iron grating.

"The one with the least luck dies."

Everyone's waiting for the traffic to pause.

If she made it to the other side, Akamatsu can't see her anymore. Even talent disappears in crowds like this. Meaningless outside articles and bad television.

"Pretty cliche," she says.

"Yeah," her friend says. "But it scares me."

Crowds pull her from the wall, and Akamatsu grabs their hand without a thought to the consequence. They could watch something together. Go to their place. Her room was a mess. She couldn't stand the embarrassment. Didn't they promise, after all - concrete threatening her heels with every step.

There are many things she wants to say. But all that makes it out is a quiet laugh. Akamatsu throws her hair over her shoulder, to look back to them, held over the distance of two long arms, and their wide-eyed shock.

"Why's it so creepy?" she asks.

They rush to catch up, but she goes faster, pulling them along. Panting, they say, "J-just imagine it!" She always fell in with people like this. So easy to push and pull. "Seeing yourself, and then just ... seeing them die ... or worse."

She doesn't trip. Sun-glare migraines stick, but Akamatsu doesn't show anything. She keeps smiling.

"Don't worry about that kind of thing!" Instead, she's grinning. It takes more muscles to frown. More to cry and break down, than smile and run. "If it comes down to it, I'll protect you from any creepy shadows that look too familiar. Okay?"

"Akamatsu, where are we going?!"

Victorious escape becomes boring explanation, and she bites back a grin at how flustered they are. They look surprised she remembers promising to go to their house, but light up at the thought. Apparently lonely - most people are so busy - and Akamatsu nods through their excited chatter.

When they arrive, there are no peculiar snapshots on her phone. Their television sits on the 51st season of her favorite show. It's getting close to the end, now - only four survivors left, after a case with two culprits who had acted at once. There are never big updates with on-going filming. The most Akamatsu's found are cryptic comments from producers about execution concepts. The last episode is always a live affair - the previous episodes made of closely edited filming from various sources.

The 52nd was probably already starting. All the participants ready to go. Some said it was an act. A flagrant joke, because who would be so willing to die.

"Do you ever think about signing up?"

Akamatsu doesn't realize she's the one who asked until her mouth closes.

On screen, they're stressed, but trying. Always trying. The fabricated world is closing in around them, but they're not giving up. Sometimes people do. And somehow, that was just as satisfying, when people would crack under the pressure, and beg to be executed over the people around them. When someone admitted was easier to live in a closed box forever.

"All the time."

Someone's fingers are brushing through her hair, and she remembers her friend is making food in the kitchen. Gentle. Her nails dig into carpet.

"You're an idiot," she says.

Hearing her voice outside the vibrations of her own head - it makes her ears ring. It's too high. Hardly her voice at all.

"That's what my friends say, too."

Akamatsu grabs her hand. She grabs it, and holds it, and has no idea what to do with it. And she says, "You don't have friends."

"I do."

"You wouldn't have done this if you did."

"I'm not the one who agreed."

She jolts from the ground, ready to grab her. Throw her. Something.

No one is there. Her fingers feel bruised. On screen, they're starting to realize.

" _You can't be saying ... this is all fiction?_ "

 

 

\---

 

 

"Why were you hanging out with that kid, anyway?"

Akamatsu tries to fixate on her phone, but people lean over her. She's busy. There's a girl, standing outside the school gates. All morning, she's been watching her through the window. Waiting for her to move, or leave, or be asked to vacate the premises.

"I don't get why you're into such weird things when you're so pretty, Kaede."

"It's just fiction," she says. "Everyone's into it nowadays."

"Yeah, but there's better ways to spend your time than around nerds like that."

Everyone did this. At some point or another, and Akamatsu says, "I felt bad for them, alright? We are allowed to be nice every once in a while."

People here weren't really friends. As far as she cared. There wasn't space to throw around words like comrades or hope when everyone was only here because they had to be. If anything - Akamatsu had figured out, a long time ago, the best way to make it.

"Oh."

Lunch break means anyone comes around. It means they're standing as though stuck in a door frame, hand-made lunch to bear.

Her mouth closes to a pert smile. "Hey!" Head tilting, eyes closed, she says, "I had fun yesterday. Did you want to hang out again?"

"It's okay." Their voice shakes. Fingers threaded to a bridge on her desk, Akamatsu watches their hands as they set a box on her desk. "I just. Wanted to thank you."

"You're quite welcome," she says. The words echo in her head.

They nod. They nod, and they leave, and her classmate sighs.

"Kaede, you've got to learn not to give the weirdos that kind of hope."

She stares out the window. The piano girl's gone. "I know."

 

 

\---

 

 

The returning cast member is the first to die.

It was bound to happen. He could push his luck a couple of times, but the producers were going to target him at a certain point. Especially when the hero had gotten attached to the waifish detective instead of the mysterious fashionista.

Amami must have been knocked in the head if he thought he'd survive again.

The detective is needy and quiet and always trailing behind her, like anyone could be trusted in a situation like this. Like the girl who calls him unreliable is on his side. Akamatsu almost feels bad for him. Almost - if she didn't consider him the top candidate for first culprit.

That was the way the game was played.

"Do you want to know a secret?"

They hadn't sat with her since that day in class.

Like they'd found another golden haired beauty who happened to be obsessed with death roulettes. But it was easy to find a lonely kid, in bathrooms, minute corners of the school yard, hovering by a snack machine. She had a talent for it.

They startled, floundering, while she giggled.

"I got in."

"To what?"

In the moment, her hair had fallen back - in her head, framing her brilliantly. Akamatsu could see herself on a screen. The perfect personality for it, because she knew how to handle people.

"The fifty-third season of Danganronpa."

They've got better technology in this season. She likes the sci-fi aesthetic, this time around - cameras in a participant's eyes. Kiibo is a bit too clear a callback to Alter Ego, but they're cute. She can't dislike a robot, even if being a robot wasn't a real talent.

The stands spinning around her head make her wonder if anyone could throw up. There were viewers that would have liked even that. Akamatsu didn't put it past the producers to set-up for fan service, with everything else they'd thrown in over the years.

And there's the piano girl.

She's better at being a protagonist, there. Better than Akamatsu expected. So-called talent making her hearing better. Maybe she's just always had good perception. She never thought about it much. There was nothing special about her. Not the kind of person to stand up for people when it really mattered. Just another girl, in day to day life. If it was the fake talent making her better - if it was the situation - she didn't want to read into it.

It's a longer trial than she's seen in years.

Or maybe it's unedited.

It feels like something is burrowing up from under her skin, watching. Hot pink leaking out the thin scratches on her screen. Pianist Akamatsu is loud, and defiant, and insistent, and -

She's lying.

"But only two people make it out!"

They weren't happy about it. She'd expected if anyone would be excited for her, it'd be them. If they'd watched all the same seasons she did. If they enjoyed it too.

"Don't worry! I won't die." Closing her eyes to smile. Akamatsu forgot how often she did that. "Didn't I promise I'd stick around to protect you from creepy clones?"

"...What if you did?"

On screen, someone realizes.

It's like having the flu. Or like falling back in time, but through a black hole. Being unmade and remade and aware of it all the same. Or just sweating, nonstop, aware of every awful shudder of her heart.

Akamatsu's thought about it. Far more than she'd admit, to them or herself. But she won't say that. Won't question their anxious tears. The detective looks terrified because he knows. They're all piecing it together, and on the screen, she's turning pretty shades of blue.

She doesn't say - "So what?"

"You think it's real?"

Their hands twist in front of them, paper twined in their fingers.

"You shouldn't be so trusting," and she smiles, when she says it.

Her parents don't know. Freshly 18, and no one needed more information than her being gone for summer break. But she told them. She tells them, and leaves, and sits in blankets that cannot deflect the truth.

Akamatsu falls asleep to the soft voice of investigation, and doesn't watch the execution.

 

 

\---

 

 

"Sorry," she says.

"Don't lie to me." It's silly to say, when there's no one she lies to more.

"Not everything has to be a lie," her doppelganger says.

Her pretty designer skirt isn't any softer than her school uniform. Akamatsu presses her cheek against her lap and keeps her eyes closed.

The pianist isn't her. If she was in a life or death situation, she'd keep her hands out of murder, or make sure she got it done herself. Wouldn't let people cling to her. Wouldn't make anyone trust her. Wouldn't make friends with people who didn't know how to lie.

"Why'd you sign up?" she asks.

"You should know," Akamatsu mumbles.

"But you wanted someone to ask."

It makes her laugh. "Why didn't you push the detective to cover for you?"

Her room is silent. If it is her room, anymore, every poster on the wall melting darkness. Closed eyes don't stop the light of her computer screen. Water leaks out the edges of her eyes and she wishes she could sleep. This night or any night.

"Didn't you want to live."

"They wanted to live too."

Akamatsu scoffs. Tries - wants to. "Then why'd they sign up?"

"I'm glad you know a good investigator asks the important questions," comes to her in sing-song.

She doesn't say anything to that.

Of all the ways she could die, Akamatsu hadn't imagined hanging. Choking. Trying to pull herself up enough, only for her strength to fail her one last time. She hadn't imagined reaching for anyone.

"I'm still going," she says.

"I know," says her shadow, and her lip bleeds from how her jaw tightens.

"I'll frame the detective," she says. "I'll do it on purpose this time," she says. "I'll get out."

"He's pretty unreliable," she tells herself.

It's the kind of person she attracts in spades. Her throat burns. "He won't mind long." That was better than living with the truth, forever.

"And neither will they?"

School freshmen are not friends, for how they overflow with undeserved trust, and Akamatsu is not crying.

"Why did you have to die so easily."

"You asked me not to lie."

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I like that Akamatsu considered herself someone so mistrustful, but also - in the prologue, devoid of memory and talent, she's just a confused young woman who doesn't know what's going on. No matter what's been fabricated. The idea of seeing a facsimile of herself make choices that lead to her death, when she thinks she's capable of worse - when she's willing to put herself into a situation like this at all. I love kids who don't know how good they can be, and when it's so much easier to be "good" in closed boxes. I love this cast of kids who are so fixated on death.
> 
> I love the fact that Akamatsu could believe herself to be that way, but still have signs and traits of the person she is as a part of the game. It Kills Me.


End file.
